Here’s to another 200 years of top-class education

The Bishop of Oxford says the Church of England should celebrate its schools service — and build on it

We should be proud of our Christian heritage as a nation. It is part of our
DNA, and a key foundation is the Church of England’s consistent and
dedicated service to educating our children.

Later this week the Church of England is publishing a review of church schools
by Priscilla Chadwick — a leading educationist — that addresses the
challenges for the church, and society, in protecting and nurturing church
schools for the future.

It is 11 years since Lord Dearing published his groundbreaking report on
church schools. Since then the landscape has been transformed.

The academies programme, with the enthusiastic backing of a Labour government
and a prime minister who put education at the top of his political
priorities, started the process of forcing the educational establishment to
abandon a few shibboleths. The current government has added a turbo-boost to
these reforms.